It is with great sadness that AIMS South Africa announces the passing of Prof. Ronnie Becker on 26 March 2023.
Prof. Becker was a Senior Resident Researcher at AIMS South Africa and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Cape Town (UCT). His undergraduate work was done at UCT partly under D B Sears and he received a PhD under Norman Levinson at MIT. From 1964 until retirement he was a member of the Department of Maths and Applied Maths at UCT, continuing to work thereafter at UCT.
Prof. Becker made scientific contributions in areas ranging from differential equations (ordinary, partial and abstract), theoretical computer science (sorting networks and artificial intelligence), operations research (optimization problems on graphs) to mathematical finance (Malliavan calculus, American options through filtering, multicurve applications, applications of Lèvy processes). Since retirement he has taught and administered programmes in mathematical finance and supervised many Master’s and PhD students.
He was appointed as a Senior Resident Researcher in the AIMS South Africa Research Centre from 1 August 2009 where he made an enormous contribution. The last course that he taught at AIMS South Africa was a Masters course in financial mathematics only a month ago. AIMS South Africa is mourning. We will miss him tremendously.
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